143 things about Iceland nobody asked for.

The fun facts from the app, all of them, in the voice of a local who has had to explain the Christmas Cat one too many times.

Straight from the app, updated 13 September 2026. Get Icebreaker for a fresh one every time you tap.

We have an app to check if your date is your cousin
Beer was illegal until 1989. A lot of people were born in 1990.
We have 13 Santas. Called Yule Lads. One steals sausages.
Our electricity is almost 100% renewable. Hydro and geothermal. The cars are still working on it.
You can snorkel between tectonic plates.
Reykjavík means 'Smoky Bay'.
Iceland was settled in 874. People saw a cold volcanic island in the ocean and thought: yes, perfect.
Iceland’s parliament is one of the oldest in the world. People have been arguing here for a looong time.
Iceland only has one native land mammal. It’s the arctic fox.
Icelandic horses have their own weird little walk called the tölt. Very smooth. Very smug.
The world’s largest puffin colony is in Vestmannaeyjar. Tiny birds. Massive confidence.
The first European to settle in North America was Icelandic. Leifur "The Lucky" Eiriksson.
The tap water is ridiculously clean. Paying for bottled water here is ridiculous.
There are over 100 volcanoes. So yes, the ground is also being dramatic.
Iceland has no military. No army. No navy.
Europe’s largest glacier is in Iceland. Vatnajökull. It means "Water Glacier". Original...
About a tenth of Iceland is covered by glaciers. The rest is lava, moss, and wind.
There are very few forests in Iceland. We have a joke - If you get lost in one, just stand up.
You can literally go inside a volcano. Because looking at one from the outside was apparently not enough...
Sheep roam free in summer. They do not care whose rental car you’re driving.
Icelanders love licorice. A lot. Sometimes in ways that feel personal.
Iceland has its own horse breed. Short, strong, and with fabulous hairstyles.
If an Icelandic horse leaves the country, it can’t come back. Tough border policy.
Iceland sits on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The country is literally being pulled apart.
People bake bread by burying it in the ground. Geothermal energy: now in loaf form.
Iceland is considered one of the safest countries in the world. Still don’t be stupid.
There’s a special naming committee to approve names. Even babies have to clear admin.
Greenland is further east, west, north, and south than Iceland. Figure that.
There is a penis museum in Iceland. Of course there is.
There is a museum dedicated to witchcraft and sorcery.
Icelandic has letters you probably don’t have on your keyboard. Þ, Ð, Æ, Ö and a whole set of accented vowels.
Modern Icelanders can still read medieval texts pretty well. 1000 years of isolation and a stubborness to change.
You can go inside glacial ice caves. Beautiful. Also temporary. Like many good ideas.
Iceland used to be ruled by Denmark. Not our proudest moment.
Skyr is our version of yoghurt. Our greatest export since bad financial decisions.
Traditional Icelandic food can get pretty weird. Try the fermented shark.
Lýsi, or cod liver oil, is basically national medicine. It tastes like...discipline.
Ice hockey is not a big deal in Iceland. There’s only so much ice one country can emotionally commit to.
Iceland once battled England in a conflict called the Cod Wars. Fish diplomacy got aggressive. (We won by the way).
Europe’s most powerful hot spring is in Iceland. The water here has main-character energy.
We have exactly one Nobel Prize. Halldór Laxness, literature, 1955. We bring it up a lot.
A lot of books get published in Iceland. More people here write books than probably should.
Iceland elected the world’s first democratically chosen female president.
We elected the world’s first openly gay prime minister.
Most beaches in Iceland are black. Very pretty. Slightly ominous...
The Great Auk went extinct in Iceland. Humans did what humans do best.
Winter days in Iceland are extremely short. Daylight becomes a limited-edition feature.
Summer days are extremely long. Sleep becomes optional.
Surnames are rare in Iceland. The phone book is basically first-name chaos.
There are a lot of seals around Iceland. They're up to something...
There’s a botanical garden in North Iceland. Plants are really trying their best up there.
Hallgrímskirkja took over 40 years to build. Icelanders are born procrastinators.
The windiest place in Europe is in Iceland. So no, your umbrella won’t survive.
There’s a lost treasure ship off the South Coast. Very pirate.
The Apollo astronauts trained in Iceland before going to the moon. Close enough, apparently.
Reagan and Gorbachev met in Reykjavík during the Cold War. Casual little history moment.
A whole new island formed off Iceland’s coast in the 1960s. The country was still being assembled.
Reykjavík is the northernmost capital in the world.
Polar bears do occasionally drift to Iceland from Greenland. Everyone involved hates this.
Irish monks may have been in Iceland before the Vikings. Quietly. Very on-brand for monks.
There was no TV on Thursdays in Iceland until 1987. The whole country basically took the night off.
The word ‘geyser’ comes from the O.G. Icelandic Geysir. We named the thing so hard it became the whole category.
The national sport is glíma, a type of trouser-grip wrestling. Boredom does things to people...
The whale from Free Willy was Icelandic. Career-wise, huge.
Iceland has a special kind of sheep called "leader sheep". Some sheep here are apparently management.
The letter Z was removed from the Icelandic alphabet in 1973. It was voted off the island.
There are no mosquitoes in Iceland. Nobody knows exactly why. We try not to bring it up in case they hear.
Iceland doesn’t change its clocks for daylight savings. The daylight here is already in charge.
You must shower naked before entering an Icelandic public pool. There is a pool monitor. They will check. Don’t argue.
Over 120 public pools for under 400,000 people. Heated, outdoor, in almost every village. The pool is the social network.
Christmas in Iceland starts at 6pm on the 24th. Dinner first, then presents. The 25th is for digesting.
On Christmas Eve we give each other books and read in bed with chocolate. Jólabókaflóðið. The greatest tradition on Earth.
There is a Christmas Cat. It eats people who didn’t get new clothes for Christmas. Capitalism, but make it medieval.
Iceland declared independence from Denmark in 1944 — while Denmark was occupied by Germany. Bad timing for Denmark.
In 1627, Algerian pirates kidnapped about 400 Icelanders and sold them into slavery in North Africa. We call it Tyrkjaránið. Long memory.
Iceland was the first country to recognize Estonia’s independence in 1991. There’s a square in Tallinn named after us.
Iceland legalized abortion in 1935. Decades ahead of basically everyone.
Most police in Iceland don’t carry guns. The first fatal police shooting in the country’s history was in 2013. People still talk about it.
After the 2008 crash, we banged pots and pans outside parliament until the government quit. The Pots and Pans Revolution.
Iceland jailed several bank CEOs after the 2008 collapse. Different approach.
Iceland drove on the left side of the road until 26 May 1968. The whole country switched overnight. Astonishingly few crashes.
Fermented shark is buried for 6 to 12 weeks, then hung to dry for months. The smell is the warning. The taste is the punishment.
At Þorrablót, the midwinter feast, we eat ram testicles, sheep’s head and fermented shark. Then everyone sings.
Bananas grow in Iceland — in geothermal greenhouses. Not many. Just enough to confuse everyone.
At Euro 2016 our football team beat England and the “Huh!” Viking clap went viral. One of the coaches was a part-time dentist.
Bobby Fischer, the American chess champion, is buried in Iceland. He defected here. We kept him.
Sigur Rós, the band, sings in an invented language called Hopelandic. It sounds like Icelandic but means nothing on purpose.
McDonald’s left Iceland in 2009. The last burger sold is on display in a hostel. It still hasn’t decomposed. Mostly fine.
In 2010 Eyjafjallajökull grounded most of Europe’s flights for about a week. Newscasters still won’t try the name.
Hot water in Icelandic homes comes from the ground naturally. It smells faintly of sulphur. After 3 days you stop noticing.
Iceland records dozens of small earthquakes on a normal day. Most you don’t feel. The country basically vibrates.
Geysir mostly sleeps now. Its neighbour Strokkur erupts every few minutes and does all the work.
Dettifoss, one of Europe’s mightiest waterfalls, opens the film Prometheus. It didn’t need makeup to play an alien planet.
Dogs were banned in Reykjavík until 1984. A tapeworm scare in the 1920s started it. Cats were fine.
In 1973 an eruption on Heimaey threatened to close the harbour. Locals sprayed seawater on the lava for five months. It worked.
Vigdís Finnbogadóttir was the first single woman in Iceland allowed to adopt. Eight years later, she was president.
Ingólfur Arnarson threw his high-seat pillars overboard and settled where they washed up. That’s how Reykjavík got picked.
Around 60% of Icelanders’ maternal ancestry is Celtic. Many of those women came as slaves. The sagas mostly skip that part.
We take Eurovision very seriously. Watch parties, costumes, scoring sheets. We have never won. The grief is annual.
Björk recorded her first album at age 11 — a children’s record from 1977. She has been famous in Iceland for almost her entire life.
Iceland sits under the auroral oval. Northern Lights show up roughly 100 nights a year, September to April. Clouds permitting.
The Northern Lights are technically silent. But people swear they hear a faint crackling. The cold does things to the ears.
Aurora colours depend on which gas the solar wind hits. Green is oxygen at low altitude. Pink and purple are rarer. Red is dramatic.
Reykjavík has turned off its city lights for major aurora displays. The whole capital, dimmed, for a sky show.
Reindeer live wild only in East Iceland. They were brought from Norway in the 18th century. They wander down to the road in winter.
The Icelandic sheepdog is the country’s only native dog breed. Sturdy, loyal, born to herd in a place with no trees.
More than half of the world’s Atlantic puffins live in Iceland. They burrow nests, mate for life, and occasionally fall down chimneys.
Húsavík whale tours see whales well over 95% of the time. If none show up, most operators let you go again for free.
Reynisfjara’s sneaker waves have killed visitors. Check the warning light at the entrance and stay 30 metres from the water.
Our unofficial national dish is the hot dog. At Bæjarins Beztu, order ‘eina með öllu’: one with everything.
Fermented shark is traditionally chased with Brennivín, nicknamed ‘Black Death’. The pairing is medicinal more than culinary.
Hangikjöt is smoked lamb traditionally eaten at Christmas. Traditionally smoked over dried sheep dung. Yes really.
Icelandic Easter eggs come with a written proverb inside. Childhood = chocolate + cryptic wisdom.
Iceland’s weather can change four times in an hour. There’s a national saying: 'If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.'
The First Day of Summer is a public holiday in late April. The snow has usually not been informed.
Beer Day in Iceland is the 1st of March — the anniversary of beer becoming legal in 1989. Pubs go all-in.
On Öskudagur, Ash Wednesday, kids dress up and sing in shops for candy. Halloween, but in late winter, and weirder.
Our handball team won Olympic silver in 2008. A nation of 320,000 watched the final like it was a moon landing.
Our parliament first met at Þingvellir in 930, in a rift between two tectonic plates. Politics has been splitting us ever since.
In Eyrbyggja saga, a haunted farm takes its ghosts to court. They are tried, sentenced, and walk out the door.
On 24 October 1975, 90% of Icelandic women took the day off. Sausages sold out nationwide. Easiest thing for the men to cook.
Iceland went Christian by a vote at Alþingi in the year 1000. The pagan lawspeaker decided after a day and a night under a fur.
In 1971 Denmark returned the first of our medieval manuscripts. Thousands waited at Reykjavík harbour, cheering. For books.
In 2015 the Road Administration moved a 70-tonne rock out of a new road’s path. Some believe it’s an elf church. Better safe.
Hildur Guðnadóttir won the 2020 Oscar for her Joker score, the first Icelander ever to win one. Björk just got to wear the swan.
In 2010 Reykjavík elected a comedian mayor. His party promised a polar bear for the zoo. After 2008, it sounded reasonable.
Britain invaded neutral Iceland in May 1940. We filed a formal protest. Then they built Reykjavík’s airport.
Our word for computer is tölva: ‘tala’ (number) plus ‘völva’ (prophetess). We build new words rather than borrow English ones.
Gandalf, Thorin and Bombur are all named in Völuspá, an Old Norse poem saved in an Icelandic manuscript. Tolkien took notes.
Wine, spirits and proper beer are sold at the state liquor shop, Vínbúðin. It’s closed on Sundays. Saturdays get tense.
At Christmas we mix Appelsín orange soda with Malt and call it jólaöl. Every family has a ratio. Every other family is wrong.
Those purple lupine fields came from Alaska in 1945 to stop soil erosion. They took the job a little too seriously.
The Arctic Circle misses mainland Iceland and runs through Grímsey island. It drifts, so a concrete ball there is moved to follow.
Gullfoss was nearly leased out for hydropower. A farmer’s daughter, Sigríður Tómasdóttir, fought it for years. It’s still here.
Arctic terns fly about 70,000 km a year, to Antarctica and back. Then they dive-bomb your head in June for walking near the nest.
Harðfiskur is wind-dried fish. We eat it as a snack with a thick layer of salted butter. The butter is not optional.
Every Icelander has a kennitala, an ID number starting with their birthday. The bank, the gym and the pharmacy all ask for it.
Tipping isn’t expected here; service is already in the price. Cards work almost everywhere. Cash is mostly for nostalgia.
Outside Reykjavík, the petrol station is often also the restaurant. Burgers, soup, hot dogs. Petrol is a side dish.
Icelandic swimming pool culture joined UNESCO’s intangible heritage list in 2025. Hot tub gossip is now officially protected.
The Safetravel app sends your GPS location to Iceland’s 112 emergency line. Install it before you head into nature.
F-roads are highland tracks for 4x4s only. Many cross rivers with no bridge, and rental insurance does not cover water damage.
Icelandic wind can bend a car door back on its hinges. Rental insurance often won’t cover it. Open doors with both hands.